RK15 - Santa Bismarck

[Meatbuster]

With the holidays fast approaching, Bismarck thinks he can spread the cheer among the nice and lay the smack down on the naughty.



Tentative settings:
Difficulty: Emperor
Map: Standard Low Sea Pangaea
Opponents: 8
Choose Religions (I just like it)

More opponents than ever before, just with low sea.

***

Forgot to state the variant rules:
1. Nice people get gifts: We will grant any gold and tech request from friendly, pleased civs
2. Naughty people don't: We will refuse any gold and tech demand from annoyed, furious civs
(So this means we can decide what to do with cautious civs. Other requests such as break deals or war are up to us.)
3. Once Steam Power is researched, we must mine coal without any unreasonable delay and gift one coal resource each to all our enemies (annoyed, furious). We can keep any remaining coal.
3a. Any other civ who falls to annoyed/furious in the future will get coal from Santa.
3b. We are allowed to give in to a "stop trade" request from nice (friendly, pleased) and cautious civs even if it involves canceling our coal gifts.
4. Our civs color will be changed to red (after start has been decided).

***

Additional clarifications:

1. What about requests to go to war/cancel trades from friends?
2. Santa chooses who to beat down at his discretion?
3. Have to declare/cancel against naughty civs upon request?
4. I'm guessing only "gifts" are a must give, but this plays pretty heavily into diplomatic planning so would be good to figure out.
5. And uh... can Santa declare war on nice AIs?
6. Since you didn't mention it I am assuming Santa can just plant drugs on a friend and declare them naughty and in need of conquest.
7. As a side note if we meet an AI that is known to be bossy we may want to forcibly make ourselves cautious or worse at all times ideally. Does this go against the variant though? Can Santa force people to be naughty?

Hmm... since I'm the president of the RK series, I might as well decide for sure before we cross the bridge.
1. Santa's discretion.
2. Yes.
3. Santa's discretion.
4. Just no giving gifts to naughty leaders.
5. Yes, no declaring on friends. Of course he can fight back if attacked by a previously nice AI. However, if somehow, after end of war they are still cautious or better...
6. Santa doesn't do that himself. However, if an event happens... or a change of religion by us or them happens... (Think of changing religion as... a change of world view and philosophy and judgement.)
7. Well, Santa judges people by his own standards, but let's try not to do the "demand until -99 diplo penalty" trick. Anyway, if we do meet someone normally demanding like Isabella, yeah, it may be prudent not to befriend them.

 

[Meatbuster]

If settings are accepted, we have the following starts pre-generated by me. Contrary to tradition, initial scout has not been moved.

Start 1:


Start 2:


Start 3:
2 food sources, gold and massive flood plains... nope.

Start 4:

 

[Meatbuster]

We will be following standard SG etiquette. Time: 24 hours got-it, 48 hours to play.
Remember, don't be like Evil Uncle Meatbuster. War, founding new cities, civics change and other major decisions should be discussed with the team first.

Recommended turnsets:
Round 1: 30-25-20-20-20
Round 2: 15-20 until about 1000AD
Round 3: 10-15
Please feel free to play more or less turns to stop at a major event.

Players from RK14 are welcome, we hope you can check in and spread the holiday cheer.
Also we would like one more player. We're likely to play on Emperor.

Roster:
Meaty
Glarey
Whitey
Lansky
IT (hey, it rhymes)

EDIT: Slot taken!

 

[Glare Seethe]

Voting for 1, Warrior > Worker, AH > BW > Fishing, scout to the sheep. I can't imagine not settling in place.

 

[Meatbuster]

There's a problem with 1, it's not next to a river or lake.
(Note: that big body of water, yes, it's coast)

I vote for #2 because it has decent amount of land along with sea resources and a potential land food resource in the fog, along with a fresh water lake.

EDIT: Forgot to state variant rules. Updated first post.

 

[Lansky]

Well I hate coastal starts but that aside I'll throw a wrench into things and vote for #3 shown (#4 listed).

Crabs are rarer and easier to trade.
That's a lot of food.
3 hills and settling on the riverside plains hill for WB production early or a quick wonder. Maybe another to the west but I can't fog gaze these little pics well.


Most importantly due to the crab on the northern coast....

We are almost assuredly at a pole, most likely the North Pole! No snow/ice but you can't have it all.

 

[Ignorant Teacher]

Is there room for one more?

 

[White Dragon]

Whitey here. Or call me Milky. My real name is Jasper.

I vote for #4 with the crabs & riverside plain hill.

 

[Glare Seethe]

There's a problem with 1, it's not next to a river or lake.

Is there some kind of Christmas/Santa river/lake connection? This thread is going to be filled with references to a holiday I know little about, I guess. :\ Had to look up the coal thing on Wikipedia. Actually when you said to imagine Bismarck with a beard and in red I thought you were hinting at Marx.

Ignorant Teacher - pretty sure there is, yeah!

 

[Lansky]

Nothing at all to do with Christmas and fresh water - just implying the lack of the fresh water bonus. Less important with expansive, but still nice.

Took a look at the save for #4

3 crabs
1 wheat
2 forested plains hills (fog to the west)
2 forested grass hills
1 grassland (non forest fogged) tile which undoubtedly holds a strategic resource.
Awesome settler/worker/wonder pump.
Wonders = Toys?
And of course the North Pole connection!

How easy would it be to change the nation flag to something more festive? I've never tried to alter those before.

 

[Rex Tyrannus]

Sorry to spam your game, folks, but I just love that first post showing Santa's unique unit as a Panzer. That'd make my kids clean their rooms all December.

 

[Meatbuster]

^
LOL: We can always play Maya instead, Holkans look like elves.

@glare: We might have health problems early rather than late. If we don't have fresh water. Just taking my time off to mention it. Hmm... Marx, perhaps a guy Madscientist can play as in his RPC.

Is there any flag more festive? The only thing I can think of is the Brotherhood from the Lonely Hearts Sid game.

Ok, the votes are in, #4 wins, I'll just worldbuilder the flag and civ color, move the scout and we're good to go.

Welcome to the game, Ignorant Teacher..!

 

[Ignorant Teacher]

Welcome to the game, Ignorant Teacher..!

That's great! I don't understand one thing: are we allowed to keep one source of coal to ourselves?

 

[Meatbuster]

^ We are, if there are no civs we can gift it to. (Say, we have 3 coals, and 2 enemies. Or even if we have 2 coals, 2 enemies but we're at war with one so we can't gift them.)

Ok moved the scout: the brotherhood flag is still subject to change pending something more jolly.

Also I checked the opponents, Russia and Japan are not there. In case they are, they will just be of a different color automatically assigned by the game anyway.

 

[Lansky]

*Settle in place - duh
*Starting build uh... I'll have to open the save when I wake up in the morning to see.
*Fishing/AG/BW in some order see above comment about having to check.


What about requests to go to war/cancel trades from friends?
Santa chooses who to beat down at his discretion?
Have to declare/cancel against naughty civs upon request?
I'm guessing only "gifts" are a must give, but this plays pretty heavily into diplomatic planning so would be good to figure out.
And uh... can Santa declare war on nice AIs? Since you didn't mention it I am assuming Santa can just plant drugs on a friend and declare them naughty and in need of conquest.

As a side note if we meet an AI that is known to be bossy we may want to forcibly make ourselves cautious or worse at all times ideally. Does this go against the variant though? Can Santa force people to be naughty?

IT - If we have 3 sources of coal and 3 naughty AI's then Santa has run out of coal! Diplomacy is going to be very very weird this game. Have to pick our friends carefully, making sure to check the list twice.

 

[Meatbuster]

1. What about requests to go to war/cancel trades from friends?
2. Santa chooses who to beat down at his discretion?
3. Have to declare/cancel against naughty civs upon request?
4. I'm guessing only "gifts" are a must give, but this plays pretty heavily into diplomatic planning so would be good to figure out.
5. And uh... can Santa declare war on nice AIs?
6. Since you didn't mention it I am assuming Santa can just plant drugs on a friend and declare them naughty and in need of conquest.
7. As a side note if we meet an AI that is known to be bossy we may want to forcibly make ourselves cautious or worse at all times ideally. Does this go against the variant though? Can Santa force people to be naughty?

Hmm... since I'm the president of the RK series, I might as well decide for sure before we cross the bridge.
1. Santa's discretion.
2. Yes.
3. Santa's discretion.
4. Just no giving gifts to naughty leaders.
5. 5. Yes, no declaring on friends. Of course he can fight back if attacked by a previously nice AI. However, if somehow, after end of war they are still cautious or better...
6. Santa doesn't do that himself. However, if an event happens... or a change of religion by us or them happens... (Think of changing religion as... a change of world view and philosophy and judgement.)
7. Well, Santa judges people by his own standards, but let's try not to do the "demand until -99 diplo penalty" trick. Anyway, if we do meet someone normally demanding like Isabella, yeah, it may be prudent not to befriend them.

 

[Meatbuster]

Hmm... that may mean we can hit a brick wall if we eliminate all the naughty civs leaving the nice ones and not enough lands for domination. Since Bismarck is industrious, culture victory is an option. Diplomacy is great, as with space as a last resort. Think of it as Santa expanding his operations to Alpha Centauri...

 

[Ignorant Teacher]

Another vote to settle in place.

Let's say we have two nice AIs and one of them declares on another. Does that make them naughty boys?

 

[White Dragon]

Whitey is confused by the Head Elf's rules but gets the overall idea.

Settle in place.

We get a +25% bonus for workers so we don't need one up front. Also, until we get BW, at least from the look of things, the only thing our worker could do is farm the wheat. So, I vote for warrior(s) first while researching fishing. Then workboat(s) until we can finish a worker on the same turn as BW finishes.

Our UU could be a Reindeer, which replaces a Chariot, requires deer but has 3 movement points.
Or an Elf, replacement for a worker and completes improvements 25% faster.

 

[pholkhero]

lurker's comment:

Sorry to spam your game, folks, but I just love that first post showing Santa's unique unit as a Panzer. That'd make my kids clean their rooms all December.

It's as if santa's saying in his leader pic: "Eh? F--- me, Monty? No, no, no, f--- you. BRING OUT ZE TANKS!!!"

RoboBuster ~ i must say i love the idea of this game, so from time to time i may have to spam some cliched xmas jokes,